英语专业语言学课件

Complements
Complements are themselves phrases and provide information abut the head, e.g. a story about a sentimental boy; a sentence-like construction may sentencealso function as a complement such as in “I believed that she was innocent. I doubt if she will come. They are keen for you to show up.” That/if /for are complementizers.
Chapter4 Syntax
What来自百度文库is syntax?
It studies how words are combined to form sentences and the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures.
CP C NP Infl Birds Figure-1 CP C NP Infl Birds do Figure-2 VP fly S VP fly S
CP
S VP fly
C Infl NP Infl Do birds e Figure-3
Deep structure & surface structure
Coordinate and subordinate construction
a. b. c. d. e. f. g.
boys and girls coffee or tea Tom loves Mary and Mary loves Tom too. two dogs swimming in the lake hot beyond endurance can drink
There are two levels of syntactic structure. The one formed by the XP rule is called D-structure. The Dfinal synctic form of the sentence which results from appropriate transformations is called S-structure. S-
Auxiliary movement (inversion)
CP S C Infl Det Will the NP N Infl train e V arrive
Do insertion
Do insertion---- Insert interrogative do into an empty Infl insertion---position.
Transformations
Auxiliary movement (inversion) Do insertion Deep structure & surface structure Wh-movement Wh-
Auxiliary movement (inversion)
Inversion Move Infl to the left of the subject NP. Inversion (revised) Move Infl to C. CP S C Det the NP N Infl train will V arrive
Subordinate construction
Endocentric and exocentric construction
Endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent to that of one or more of its constituents, which serves as a center or head. Exocentric construction refers to a group of syntactically related words where none of the words is functionally equivalent to the group as a whole. There is no center or head.
Phrase elements
Specifier Head complement
XP
Specifier
X
Complement
Specifiers
---- Semantically, specifiers make more precise the meaning of the head. Determiners serve as the specifiers of NP while qualifiers typically function as the specifiers of VP and degree words as the specifiers of AP and sometimes PP.
Chomsky and transformationaltransformationalgenerative grammar
Chomsky's innateness hypothesis Phrase structure rules Transformational rules
Chomsky's innateness hypothesis
Phrase structure rules
The grammatical mechanism that regulates the arrangement of elements that make up a phrase is called a phrase structure rule, such as: as: NP (Det) + N +(PP)……e.g. those people, the fish on the +(PP)……e plate, pretty girls. girls. VP (Qual) + V + (NP)……e.g. always play games, finish (NP)……e assignments. assignments. AP (Deg) + A + (PP)……very handsome, very pessimistic, (PP)……very familiar with, very close to PP (Deg) + P + (NP)……on the shelf, in the boat, quite (NP)……on near the station. station.
Construction and constituent IC analysis
S NP Det A N boy V found VP NP Det the N evidence
Coordinate construction
Endocentric
Syntactic constructions
Exocentric
Children learn their native language very fast and with little effort. Children learn their mother tongue in very different environments. But they follow more or less the same stages in acquisition. Children can not only produce and understand sentences they have heard, but also sentences they have never heard before. What they learn seems to be a set of rules rather than individual sentences.
Lexical categories
Noun (N) Verb (V) Adjective (Adj) Adverb (Adv) Preposition (Prep) Pronoun (Pron) Determiner (Det): the, a, this, those Degree words (Deg): quite, very, more, so Qualifier (Qual): often, always, seldom, almost Auxiliary (Aux): must, should, can, might Conjunction (Con): and, but, or
Phrasal categories
Phrasal categories----phrases made up of words of categories----phrases different lexical categories. They are classified according to the central word around which the phrase is built, such as NP(N), VP(V), AP(A), PP(P).
The organization of the syntactic component
The XP rule
Deep structure
Syntactic relations
Positional relation refers to the sequential arrangement of words in a language. Relation of substituability refers to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in the same sentence structures. structures. Relation of co-occurrence: a word of one set may permit co-occurrence: the occurence of a word of another set to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. sentence.
Exercises
Draw a tree diagram "The student wrote a letter yesterday." "The man beat the boy with a stick." "Flying planes can be dangerous." Headed or non-headed nonHis son will be keenly competing. competing. Ducks quack. quack. The ladder in the shed is long enough. I saw a bridge damaged beyond repair. repair. Singing hymns is forbidden in some countries. His handsome face appeared in the magazine. He enjoys climbing high mountains. mountains. The man nodded patiently. patiently. A man roused by the insult drew his sword.